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After an hour my lip started coming off.

Dirt and latex don’t mix too well. Even worse is latex and sweat. The three of us had been put into makeup so that we would look like old men. The makeup process involved painting 3 to 6 layers of latex on our faces to give the effect of wrinkles. After about and hour and a half I had been talking and sweating and the latex on my upper lip started coming off.  Needless to say Amber the makeup girl wasn’t too thrilled with me.

While Amber was rearranging my face the kids had finished their day. André had an opportunity to thank the kids and some of the parents for their help that day. By the time my face was re-applied all of the parents and the kids had already left. I want to thank each and every one of them for their time and help that morning.  I enjoyed talking with the parents and the kids were a blast to work with. We hope the kids had a great time too.

It’s now about 1:30 PM and it’s all band in front of the camera.  We initially went into this video without the intention of seeing the band at all. However, Jared convinced us with his treatment that we should see the band in the video. All right. Here we go.

For the first shots of the band as old men, I had to come in to the set from behind a door, walk to the other band members who are already smoking cigars and playing poker and start singing. We did a couple of camera rehearsals and then got ready for the first take. While waiting for the first take one of my favorite memories of that day’s shoot took place.

As I am waiting on my mark on the other side of the door, a crew member is talking to a couple other of the crew outside the door and blurts out:

“I’m not going to be able to get this @#$%ing song out of my head all day.”

This crew person’s back was to me and I guess they weren’t aware that I was there. I thought it was hilarious.  We don’t take ourselves too seriously and at the same time realize that the song is not everybody’s cup of tea.  That’s fine with us. We had spent nearly a year working sporadically on the song so through good and bad we had heard it over and over and over ourselves. If anybody understood this crew member’s sentiment it was me.

The other crew people around looked at this individual with horror expecting me to loose my mind. Instead I turned around and simply said “I know what you mean.” and turned back to my mark.

The way I saw it was we had at least 8 more hours of work to do and I reasoned that I could at least let them know that I know that I’m not offended or that I hold a grudge because they don’t like my song. Liking our material is not a course requirement but it will make the day go by quicker.

However, this person gets no points for tact or timing and we had 8 more hours of listening to the song. Sometimes we create our own hell.

Once we finished shooting the old men scenes we went upstairs and peeled the latex off.  We were more than happy to get that stuff off of our faces after 3 or 4 hours.  I was happiest that I was finally able to get the dirt boogers out of my nose from working on that dirt floor for hours as well.  We were given a solvent to break down the latex on our faces, but we had more fun pulling it from our faces first. It was a cool and creepy feeling peeling what felt like whole sheets of skin from our faces. Dave and I enjoyed the process a lot more than André did.

The other interesting side effect about the latex is that even after you clean it all off your skin is still wrinked from being bunched together like that for hours.  It’s like waking up with pillow face.

Since I had peeled my makeup off first my skin recovered first so I was hauled in and leered for the camera until Jared stopped laughing at me. The whole band came in and we worked on the performance portion of the video until the dinner break.

The area that we were working in was only 5 and a half feet from the floor to the ceiling. I am the shortest person in the band at 6′ tall. Both Dave and André are 6’4″. André was mostly ok because he was sitting down behind the drums or on the couches for most of the shots. Dave however was getting miserable as his back and knees were killing him from having to crouch or crook his neck or rest a knee on an amp so that the camera could see his face. Every single person in the crew and in the band cracked their head on the cross-members and “ceiling” at least once.  I had managed to avoid doing it until towards the end of the night when I walked straight into a support beam. Hilliarious.

After the dinner break everyone’s energy started flagging. Jared and Nick the gaffer rallied the troops and they set up for the next two shots.

The second to the last shot was of the band in present day singing and playing poker together. After a couple of takes of that we set up for the final shots of the day us opening and turning the pages of a photo album. The photo album had green construction paper in it in place of pictures. Stills of the kids and band will be superimposed over the green rectangles so when the pages are turned the pictures will turn into the footage of the kids playing on the playground and stealing candy as the old men band members reminice about “good times”.

The final shot was finished around 10:30 PM. Including breakdown the crew had a fourteen hour work day. It was a long shoot that day, but we got everything done that was on the shot list.

The crew broke down the set and put away the lights, camera, sticks, etc. etc. and scattered as quick as they could. Some of those poor bastards still had that song in their head the next day, I’m sure.  I sat on the set with the electrician Dave Rexrode and our buddy Jim Hamilton of Scaramanga and wondered what in the hell do do with all of the band equipment. We were beat tired and all of the gear still had to be moved upstairs. Dust and dirt was still in the air hours after everyone left. I turned and looked at André’s drum kit and saw that it was now totally and completely covered in dirt from the day’s shoot. Each time we had a new shot to do I would see his kit had that much more dirt on it, but this was unreal. André walked in, looked at the kit, and turned right around in exhaustion.  There was no way he was going to break down the kit and clean it that night.

Hours later we hauled the bass and guitar equipment upstairs but André wouldn’t deal with the drum kit until the next morning, whenever that might be. We still have two more shots to do on Sunday and one of them will be a crime against nature and the City of San Francisco.

Part 5 of the story concludes with napalm, unexpected gusts of wind, fire extinguishers, and bail money.

This entry was posted Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 5:40 pm and is filed under News, Tricycle, Videos. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.